IFZA End of Service Entitlement Undertaking — What It Is and How to Complete It

What is the IFZA end of service entitlement undertaking?

The IFZA end of service entitlement (EoS) undertaking is a document IFZA requires for every visa cancellation under a company being liquidated. Issued on company letterhead, it confirms in writing that the visa holder's end of service gratuity and any remaining entitlements have been acknowledged and agreed between the company and the visa holder before the visa is cancelled.

Its purpose is protective. Under Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 on the Regulation of Employment Relations, an employee who completes one year of continuous service is entitled to an end of service gratuity. Once a company is liquidated it no longer exists to pay anything, so the free zone wants confirmation that the question was settled before the entity disappears — not afterwards.

The form must follow IFZA's prescribed template. It cannot be a generic resignation or clearance letter, it cannot be digitally signed, and it must carry the company's original physical stamp. Each visa holder gets a separate document; combining two people onto one form is an automatic rejection. The undertaking sits alongside the IFZA liquidation audit report in the document set that starts the liquidation.

Who needs an IFZA end of service entitlement form?

Procedurally, every visa holder sponsored by the company — employees, directors, shareholders on investor visas, and general managers. IFZA does not distinguish, and the file will not progress with one missing.

Legally, the position is more nuanced, and this is where owner-managed companies get confused. The statutory gratuity entitlement under the labour law arises from an employment relationship. A shareholder holding an investor or partner visa in their own company, who never had an employment contract and never drew a salary, has no statutory gratuity to calculate. The form is still required — it simply records a nil or mutually agreed entitlement.

One point worth settling before you draft anything: outstanding wages are separate from gratuity. If salaries are unpaid for the final months, that is a debt of the company that should be settled or formally agreed alongside the undertaking. A form recording an agreed gratuity while three months of salary sit unpaid is not a clean exit for anyone.

How much end of service gratuity is actually owed?

This is the calculation the form is asking you to have done, and most guidance on the topic skips it entirely. Under Article 51 of Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021, an employee who has completed one year of continuous service is entitled to:

Two corrections worth knowing, because both come from the pre-2022 regime and still circulate. Gratuity is calculated on basic salary only — housing, transport and other allowances are excluded, which is why a package of AED 15,000 with a basic of AED 8,000 produces the figure above rather than roughly double it. And under the current law the entitlement is the same whether the employee resigns or is terminated; the old reductions for resignation before five years no longer apply. If your payroll records are not clear enough to establish basic salary and start dates, that has to be resolved first — our accounting and payroll service can reconstruct it.

What must the IFZA end of service entitlement undertaking include?

IFZA provides a template and expects it followed closely. Every element below has to be present; a form missing any one of them comes back.

The period of engagement field does more work than it appears to. It establishes the service length that drives the gratuity calculation, so the dates need to be consistent with your payroll records, the visa issue date and the employment contract. An end date that post-dates the liquidation resolution, or a start date that does not match the visa file, is the kind of inconsistency that generates a query rather than an approval.

How do base visa and director visa holders sign it?

Every form carries two signatures: the visa holder, and the company's authorised signatory. In a small IFZA company these are frequently the same person, which is permitted — they sign in both capacities, on the same document, in both places.

The company stamp appears on every form regardless of who signs. Where one person signs in both capacities, the two signatures should still be placed in their respective fields rather than one signature serving both — the form is evidencing an agreement between two parties, and it needs to look like one on the page.

Why are digital signatures rejected?

IFZA requires wet signatures on the EoS undertaking and on the shareholder resolution. A signature image pasted into a Word document, a DocuSign or Adobe Sign certificate, or a stamp applied as a graphic will be rejected. The document has to be printed, hand-signed, physically stamped, then scanned for upload.

The signature also has to match the visa holder's current passport signature. This catches people who renewed a passport and changed how they sign, and it catches signatures that have simply drifted over the years. Compare the two before printing rather than after a rejection.

What is the dependent visa sequencing rule?

If a visa holder sponsors dependents — spouse, children — those dependent visas must be cancelled, or placed on hold at an AMER centre, before IFZA will process the sponsor's own visa cancellation. Submitting the sponsor's cancellation first results in the request being rejected outright, not queued.

This is the most common cause of an IFZA liquidation stalling in its first week, and it is entirely avoidable. Establish who sponsors whom before you prepare a single document, because the dependent step happens outside IFZA's portal and on someone else's timetable.

There is a further condition for anyone cancelling from inside the UAE: confirmation of the new visa status — a new visa copy, a change of status, or a passport exit stamp — is required before Establishment Card cancellation will proceed. In practice this means the visa holder needs somewhere to go before the company can finish closing, and that arrangement should be made in parallel rather than discovered at step five.

What are the IFZA visa cancellation fees and timelines?

The figures below are IFZA's published schedule at the time of writing. Free zone fees and processing times are revised periodically, so confirm the current position on the Partner Portal before budgeting [VERIFY].

What is the full IFZA liquidation document checklist?

The EoS undertaking is one item in a set. Assemble the whole thing before you start uploading — a part-submitted file sits open while the penalties continue to run.

The liquidation audit report is usually the longest lead item, because it depends on your books being complete. If bookkeeping lapsed in the final trading months, the accounts have to be rebuilt before the audit can start — which is why we normally begin the IFZA liquidation audit in parallel with the visa work rather than after it.

What else must be closed alongside the IFZA liquidation?

The free zone process runs on IFZA's clock. Two federal clocks run alongside it, on shorter deadlines, and neither is triggered by anything IFZA does. Cancelling your licence does not notify the FTA.

The sequence that works: clear outstanding VAT returns and apply for VAT deregistration first, since its window is shortest at 20 business days. Run the visa cancellations and the liquidation audit in parallel. Then file the final Corporate Tax return from the audited accounts and apply for Corporate Tax deregistration at AED 399. Handled that way each workstream produces something the next one needs; handled separately, each waits on a document another was going to generate.

How do you complete and submit the form?

Nine steps from a blank template to an accepted upload. The order matters — several items cannot be corrected once the file is submitted.

1. List every visa holder and their dependents — establish who sponsors whom before drafting anything, because the dependent step happens first and outside IFZA.
2. Cancel or hold the dependent visas — at an AMER centre, and keep the confirmation for upload.
3. Confirm each person's status — employee under contract, or shareholder or director without one. This determines whether a gratuity figure exists at all.
4. Calculate the gratuity — 21 days' basic wage per year for the first five years, 30 days per year thereafter, pro-rated for part years, nil under one year of service.
5. Draft one form per visa holder — on company letterhead, following IFZA's template, with name and passport number exactly as they appear on the passport.
6. Check signatures against passports — compare each signature to the current passport before printing.
7. Print, sign and stamp — wet signatures from the visa holder and the authorised signatory, dates written beside each, original company stamp.
8. Scan each form separately — one clear PDF per visa holder, never combined.
9. Upload and pay — submit through the IFZA Partner Portal with the cancellation request and pay the per-visa fee.

If any part of this is uncertain — particularly the gratuity figure for a shareholder-director, or the sequencing where several visa holders sponsor dependents — it is worth a review before printing rather than after a rejection. Fastlane is an IFZA-approved auditor and handles the liquidation audit report alongside the document set.